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Sunday January 19th 2003, Bruce Milton and myself on the behalf of the Nefarious Island Rock Monkeys hosted the Island Rock Crawlers on a trail run in the Sooke Hills.

We took the IRC contingent through Moose's Hideout for their first experience of the trail. You can read more about Moose's Hideout in this report: Moose's Hideout - The Hard-Arse Way.

Rob McFadden aka Silverback
12.54meg Quicktime Video

I had planned on having my CJ5 ready for the run after making some repairs and hopefully a few modifications as well. Unfortunately my parade got rained on a bit. As usual when taking apart components on a 20-30 year old vehicle I ran into a few problems. There were the usual rusty nuts and bolts that seem to take forever to deal with, and of course there were the broken bolts, and not to have them feel left out or anything there were also the lost bolts. You know the kind, those pesky little buggers that you absolutely have to have or you can't secure your drive shaft properly or you absolutely have to have or you won't have any brakes. Yup, those frickin' gawd damn #&@$in' bolts had me running around in circles for hours.

Anyways, 5am rolled around, and I thought to myself, "I can do this, I have 3.5 hours until I have to head for the trail. I can get it done, drink a whole whack-load of coffee and be on my way". Well, age and experience won out on this fine morning. I decided that doing that, and running a fairly tough trail would be hazardous not only for the CJ and myself but for those around me as well. You see I've done this before (click here to read another trip report that proves it). I'm the king of no sleep, Mr. Gung-ho, "I won't let this stop me" attitude. On the other hand, I'm not 18 anymore, and I'm finally starting to realize that.

I figured I would have just as much fun watching other people drive the trail for their first time as driving it myself, and I was right.

We started off with our morning pre-trail run rituals. Dan, Tara, Kaila and I stopped off at Sub-way to pick up our lunch, and then scooted over to the usual Sooke meeting spot to chat with the other participants while we waited for the stragglers. Several Island4x4 members came to watch the ruckus. With my Jeep being out of commission, and with other Island4x4 drivers either not meeting the trail restrictions or pretty much in the same boat as me, it would be only IRC trucks running the trail. Everyone else drove the entrance trail to Moose's Hideout, parked their trucks and walked up to the trail head.

As the spectators and myself approached the entrance, we heard some Moose calls, and then a very loud bang like a gun going off. Turns out Moose had gone up the back way with Iro and friends, and were waiting for us. I was starting to feel a little giddy at this point, knowing what was to come shortly. I wasn't quite sure how tough the trail would be for the IRC member's purpose built trucks. They all had extensive off-highway modifications including dual lockers, flexy suspensions, lift, and of course large aggressive tires. I was hoping it would be a good challenge for them, but I just wasn't quite sure what would happen.

Chris Borton was the first to enter what we call "Part Duh!" He dropped into the gully just fine, but I think there was some fairly serious pucker factor going on as he showed us his shaky hand that was still shaking a good 10 minutes or more after the experience. Not fear so much as adrenaline. Something I experienced along with a little bit of butterflies in my stomach the first time I went down the bank. I think that everyone got a bit of a rush off that decent.